Opinion: International community fuels Palestinian mirage

Luciano G. Del Negro, Special to the Gazette12.05.2012

Luciano Del Negro is Quebec vice-president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Montreal.
/ Handout

John Baird, Foreign Affairs minister for Canada, addresses the UN General Assembly, where Palestine received recognition as a “non-member observer state” on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012 in New York.Bebeto Matthews
/ The Associated Press

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MONTREAL — On Nov. 29, Canada was one of 50 countries that refused to vote in favour of upgrading the status of Palestine at the United Nations. This reflects Canada’s long-standing policy toward the Middle East. For decades, that policy has held that a two-state solution is to be achieved through a negotiated peace accord.

That Canada refuses to support UN votes undermining this position is not a new phenomenon. In 2004, Prime Minister Paul Martin began shifting Canada’s vote on recurring resolutions that singled out Israel to no constructive end, a process accelerated by the Conservatives post-2006. Indeed, both the governing Conservatives and the federal Liberals opposed this recent resolution to upgrade Palestine’s status.

Whatever symbolic value the designation of “non-member observer state” holds, it has neither created a Palestinian state on the ground nor improved the average Palestinian’s quality of life. Hamas will continue to rule Gaza, remaining fixated on the fantasy of Israel’s total destruction. Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah will govern the West Bank and devise further “preconditions” to prevent peace negotiations. The Palestinian people will remain plagued by a leadership divided between those who reject Israel’s right to exist and those who reject negotiations.

If the upgraded status is merely symbolic, what message does it send to the Palestinian leadership? If it is that the world supports an actual Palestinian state, the gesture was unnecessary. For decades, the international community and a majority of Israelis have supported the creation of Palestine upon the signing of a peace agreement. Since 2000, Israel has three times offered the Palestinian leadership a state on 100 per cent of Gaza and 90 to 95 per cent of the West Bank, with Jerusalem as a shared capital. In all three cases, those proposals were rejected.

What explains the incongruity? Why would the Palestinian leadership consistently reject offers of statehood while pushing for UN recognition of a Palestinian state? The reason is as simple as it is discouraging: Israel’s offers of statehood required a Palestinian commitment for a final end to the conflict that has afflicted both peoples since 1948.

Yasser Arafat refused to do so, which prompted U.S. President Bill Clinton to openly blame the former Palestine Liberation Organization chairman for discarding the opportunity without so much as a counter-offer. Arafat’s successor, Abbas, has refused direct negotiations entirely since 2008, the sole exception being negotiations that took place in September 2010, the final month of an unprecedented 10-month Israeli settlement freeze that Abbas had called for.

The issue is not whether a Palestinian state should be established, but rather what are the conditions under which a viable, prosperous Palestine can emerge. This is where the recent UN resolution takes a wrong turn.

A Palestinian state established without a peace accord — that is, in a continued state of war with Israel — would be a failed state. Absent a binding, internationally supported peace agreement, a Hamas takeover of the West Bank (which many consider a strong possibility) would almost certainly escalate the conflict. This is not simply a matter of Israel’s interests. Should the West Bank become a launch pad for missiles (as has Gaza under Hamas), how would this benefit the Palestinians? If Palestine is isolated on the world stage after being taken over by a terrorist entity such as Hamas, how could a Palestinian economy possibly flourish?

Just as the Palestinians desire a state, Israelis long for security from Arab aggression — the same aggression that caused Israel to occupy the West Bank in self-defence in 1967. This is why international law specifically requires Israeli withdrawal from territories only once Israel’s neighbours provide peace and security guarantees. This is the land-for-peace formula: a simultaneous, negotiated transaction prescribed by UN Resolution 242. It is under this framework that Israel traded territory for peace with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders alike will have to make painful compromises if peace is to be achieved. This will require willingness by leaders on both sides to take principled stands before their own constituents. It will take courage like that shown by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, two peacemakers once considered hardliners. If the international community fuels the mirage of a Palestinian state without peace, it will only lead Mahmoud Abbas to mistakenly believe he can avoid making difficult concessions before his people.

It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Without question, many of those who supported upgrading Palestine’s status did so to support the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians. But those who encourage the Palestinian leadership to seek statehood — even symbolic statehood — without making peace undermine a resolution to the conflict and the viability of Palestine itself.

Luciano Del Negro is Quebec vice-president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Montreal.

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